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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 2022
Merkley: He called Putin’s
Millions of children will miss healthy
school meals when pandemic relief expires actions on Ukraine a war crime
By ALLISON AUBREY
National Public Radio
When schools pivoted to virtual
learning early in the pandemic, the
National School Lunch Program was
thrown into chaos. Millions of chil-
dren rely on school meals to keep
hunger at bay, so school nutrition
directors scrambled to adopt new,
creative ways to distribute food to
families. Some of these changes
were improvements on the status
quo, they say.
And as part of pandemic relief
legislation, the federal food and
nutrition services agency waived the
requirement that schools serve meals
in a group setting, increased school-
year reimbursement rates to summer
levels for school food programs and
granted more fl exibility in how food
is prepared and packaged.
“It was a game changer,” said
Donna Martin, who heads the school
nutrition program, in Burke County,
Georgia, a rural district that has a
high rate of food insecurity.
Schools started preparing bag
lunches and other grab-and-go
options for parents to pick up at
school and take home for their kids,
and even used buses to bring meals,
sometimes days-worth, to pickup
spots in diff erent neighborhoods.
For Martin, the new fl exibility
meant that instead of preparing indi-
vidual meals, as usually required,
she used her budget to go all in on
healthy ingredients, and she started
sending boxes of fresh food home to
families, enough for several days.
“We were able to give whole
heads of broccoli and whole heads
of caulifl ower and unusual fruits and
vegetables,” Martin said. The econ-
omy of scale from bulk buying these
ingredients was a win. “We could
give much better food,” she said.
Even though kids are back in
school, Martin said many of her pan-
demic innovations are worth keep-
Karen Ducey/Getty Images
Nutritionist Shaunté Fields and bus
driver Treva White, left, deliver meals
to children and their families in Seattle.
ing. But the waivers that gave her
that fl exibility – and a boost in fed-
eral funds – are set to expire at the
end of June.
Health policy experts say the
fl exibility has served children well.
“When you improve the ability for
the country to deliver food to chil-
dren, to families, you improve the
health outcomes of Americans,” said
physician Ezekiel Emanuel, co-di-
rector of the Healthcare Transfor-
mation Institute at the University of
Pennsylvania.
The pandemic shone a spotlight
on the links between poor nutrition
and chronic illnesses such as diabe-
tes and obesity, as well as the risk of
serious illness from COVID-19, so
Emanuel said initiatives that make
child nutrition programs more effi -
cient should continue.
Martin said the expiration of
the waivers and increased fund-
ing “is going to be a disaster for my
program.”
For instance, with the summer
coming up, and a return to the rules
that require kids to be served meals
in group settings, much of her budget
will be used on transportation costs
instead of healthy ingredients —
sending buses around to kids’ homes
where they will be required to eat on
the bus in order to comply with the
rules that kids are fed in congregate
settings.
“Our county is so rural that the
kids do not have a way to get to the
schools to eat at the schools so the
buses have to take the food to them,”
Martin said. She describes the eff ect
on her program as “catastrophic.”
Bus drivers are in short supply
around the country, gas prices have
spiked, and infl ation has led to higher
food prices. “We’re going to have to
really cut back on the quality of the
meals,” Martin said.
School food directors and nutri-
tion advocates lobbied lawmakers on
Capitol Hill to include an extension
of the waivers in the omnibus spend-
ing package that President Joe Biden
signed last week. But that eff ort was
unsuccessful.
“Congress failed kids, bottom
line,” said Lisa Davis, who leads
Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hun-
gry Campaign. A wide coalition of
anti-hunger advocates and school
nutrition professionals agree that
Congress needs to act.
Because of the failure to extend
the nutrition waivers, “many schools
and community organizations will
have to stop or scale back meals over
the summer. ... This puts children at
risk of missing more than 95 million
meals this summer alone,” Davis
said. She said her organization will
keep working towards a solution.
For now, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture has its hands tied. Agri-
culture Secretary Tom Vilsack does
not have the power to renew waivers.
That power rests with Congress.
“We are disappointed that we
weren’t able to secure needed
resources and fl exibilities to help
school meals and summer feeding
programs deal with the serious chal-
lenges they are facing,” a spokesper-
son for the USDA told National Pub-
lic Radio.
Restaurant: Couple negotiated for six months
Continued from Page A1
The Allens opened at the corner
of Cottage and Pacifi c Way in the
late 1980s. T he restaurant gained
favor with locals, visitors and food-
ies from all over, with glowing
reviews from leading food and wine
publications.
At the start of the pandemic, the
restaurant closed, but the Allens
reopened as a bakery and micro
market.
Arora felt at home as soon as
he entered. “I wasn’t interested in
fl ipping it upside down,” he said.
“I wasn’t interested in any radical
transformation.”
Arora loved what the Allens
had created: a social hub with food
involved. “There’s good wine and
beer involved. There’s morning cof-
fee involved, but it’s a hub,” he said.
“And all the pieces fi t together.”
They negotiated for about six
months before announcing a deal in
February.
While terms were not disclosed,
the Allens retain ownership of the
building. The family bought the
restaurant, the fi xtures and equip-
ment. They dropped the “bakery” in
the name and will reopen as Pacifi c
Way Cafe and Marketplace.
The Aroras plan to continue serv-
ing pastries and coff ee in the morn-
ing. They’ll reopen the former cafe
space and expand the micro mar-
ket with specialty items. One side
room will contain cafe seating and
the second a wine room. Including
dining in the fi replace room and cov-
ered outdoor area, the restaurant will
have a combined seating of 52. The
restaurant will be dine in, takeout or
some combination of the two.
“It’s going to be a hybrid,” Arora
said.
To add to the menu, the Aroras
purchased the recipes and the trailer
from the former Pacifi c Crab Co.,
the business founded by Rhenee
Mady and her husband, David Far-
rell, who moved to Wisconsin.
The Aroras will bring Pacifi c
Crab Co. to the Portland Seafood &
Wine Festival in late March and the
Crab, Seafood & Wine Festival in
Astoria in late April .
For now, Arora said the career
change has invigorated him. He
said he can “never say never,” but
doesn’t have the capacity to con-
tinue his consulting at present.
“Revitalizing the Pacifi c Way
space in a way that respectfully hon-
ors its Gearhart heritage is my No.
1 priority and focus,” he said. “I’m
getting up in the morning and I can’t
wait to get to work. I haven’t had
that feeling in — I don’t know how
many years.”
Continued from Page A1
“We’re talking about some-
thing on a scale far — like, many
orders of magnitude — larger with
the Snake River dams, and fi erce,
fi erce opposition from many stake-
holders in that region in terms of
the possibility of removing the
dams,” he said. “So I don’t want
to understate what an intensive
eff ort it would take to pursue that
mission.”
Merkley pointed out that salmon
populations have declined in other
rivers, as well. “They are having
trouble everywhere, so the dams
aren’t the only issue, ” he said.
The senator, who has made
the environment a priority, said
that “we have to drive the transi-
tion from fossil fuels to renewable
energy,” such as solar and wind.
“We have to do it really fast,” he
said. “The amount of carbon diox-
ide building up in the atmosphere is
actually accelerating — that, for all
the talk and intensity of everything
we’re doing, it’s not decreasing, it’s
not slowing, it’s accelerating.”
Merkley’s comments come a
few weeks after President Biden
announced the U.S. would ban
imports of oil, coal and liquefi ed
natural gas from Russia in response
to the invasion of Ukraine that
began in late February.
He called Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s actions a war
crime.
“It is considered a war crime
to directly target civilians, and he
is targeting schools and hospitals
and cities, which is what he did in
Chechnya,” Merkley said. “But in
this case, the Ukrainian people are
much more prepared to resist. And
we need to do everything we can to
help them have those tools of resis-
tance. We need to help them on the
humanitarian side.”
The confl ict, he said , represents
a clash between diff erent visions of
government .
“Ukrainian people have fought
for the vision of freedom of assem-
bly, freedom of speech, freedom to
have fair elections,” Merkley said.
He cautioned that the U.S.
should avoid a direct military
confl ict with Russia; an escala-
tion could lead, he said, to World
War III or nuclear war. “That’s the
line that we have to carefully trod
here,” he said.
Rick Gray, of Cannon Beach,
suggested a policy for Merkley
to pass along to the White House:
“For NATO and the U.S. to accept
all of the Russian POWs and desert-
ers and give them warm, comfort-
able custody for the remainder of
the war.” He said the policy would
relieve Ukrainians of having to
guard them while undermining the
Russian war eff ort.
Merkley noted that, under the
rules of war, POWs have protected
status. G oing further and “inviting
them and knowing they’ll be well
treated is not a bad idea.”
Filibuster reform
Laurie Caplan, of Astoria, a
leader with the progressive group
Indivisible North Coast Oregon,
asked about cooperation in the
Senate .
“It feels like the Republican
Party is just determined to block
anything so they can make Pres-
ident Biden look bad, and so they
can make Democrats look bad, and
so they can make democracy look
bad and weak — and be weak,”
she said.
Merkley pointed to his push to
reform the fi libuster. The senator
advocated for a “talking fi libus-
ter,” where a senator who wanted
to hold up a bill had to continually
speak in public. The minority party
would know it couldn’t sustain
the tactic indefi nitely, the majority
party wouldn’t want the legislative
process stalled, so there would be
a two-way incentive to negotiate,
he said.
To reform the fi libuster required
50 votes — Vice President Kamala
Harris would have served as a tie-
breaker — but Merkley could
only get 48. All Republicans voted
against it, and so did U.S. Sen .
Joe Manchin, a West Virginia
Democrat, and U.S. Sen. Kyrsten
Sinema, an Arizona Democrat,
arguing that the fi libuster encour-
ages cooperation.
Merkley said the current system
rewards a minority party’s obstruc-
tion and “really encourages parti-
san paralysis.” Failure on the fi l-
ibuster meant that voting rights
legislation never came up for a
vote in the Senate.
“I am really disappointed that
I couldn’t get two more people to
reform the Senate last year,” he
said. “We’ve got to get there. It is
not serving the American people
well.”
Forum: Coming Wednesday
Continued from Page A1
director of the Astoria-Warren-
ton Area Chamber of Commerce,
hopes people stay until the end.
“Because we’re going to start
out with a lot of, ‘H ere’s what we
can’t do,’ and ‘H ere’s why we can’t
just sweep the streets and get rid of
loitering’ and those types of things
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that ... people are asking for,” Reid
said. “But at the end of this, we
really want to get to, here’s what the
police department can do. Here’s
what the city can do. Here’s what
we as individual businesses can do.
“I hope that at the end of this we
get to individual actions, collective
actions, that actually do move us
forward.”